FIVE-STAR STYLE

From Ritz Paris-branded cashmere to Swedish-designed resort wear on Lake Como and African style at luxe safari reserves, fashion has officially checked into the hotel industry

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In 2016, Alessandro Michele, then creative director at Gucci, shared a photo on Instagram.

It showed the courtyard fountain at Chateau Marmont, embellished with a stone carving of Pan, Greek god and mascot of the hotel. To the untrained eye, it was but a whimsical holiday snap.

Several years later, Pan's silhouette resurfaced - this time emblazoned in graphic form on a T-shirt sent down Gucci's Cruise 2019 runway in Arles. Fire flickered; models stalked through tombs. Somewhere in all of this, fashion had struck up a formal relationship with the hotel industry.

The T-shirt was part of a Chateau Marmont-branded capsule collection, inspired by Michele's stay at the Sunset Boulevard hotel. Legendary for its louche parties and fleet of elite former guests (Marilyn Monroe, Madonna and Robert De Niro among them), the scandal-scented Hollywood haunt where John Belushi infamously breathed his last proved a natural muse for Michele's eccentric, rock-infused vision. Michele blended the faun with Gothic-style lettering of the hotel’s logo and a floral Gucci motif in an exclusive lineup of accessories and ready-to-wear pieces.

Arguably, Gucci's drop marked the vanguard of a swiftly accelerating phenomenon: the high-end hotel as fashion collaborator. Around the globe, numerous upscale retreats are co-creating exclusive merchandise lines with lauded fashion labels.

In many ways, the movement feels inevitable; both hotel and fashion brands trade in the promise of escape, reinvention and transformation.